A Norse polytheist walking with Sigyn

Category Archives: Leaves of Yggdrasil

Possible names include: Flower, Corn Planting, Milk, and Hare Moon. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Flower”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction.

. . .

“You smell that?”

Hati inhaled and glanced up at Mani, “Flowers?”

“Not just any flowers.”

While he noted that Mani was leaning out of the wain, Hati couldn’t bring himself to get overly concerned. After a few centuries of Mani pushing the limits on how far he could reach out of the wain, it had stopped fully registering on his radar.

“The moonflowers are opening up.”

Hati sniffed the air, a little puzzled, “That’s more than just moonflowers — ”

“They’re opening for the moon, so they are all moonflowers now. I don’t make the rules.”

Hati sighed and continued to keep pace with the wain. They’d hit that point in spring.

Possible names include: Pink, Sprouting Grass, Egg, Fish, Seed, and Planter’s Moon. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Fish”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction.

. . .

The horses were walking their usual path, and everything seemed to be going along rather well for the moon’s path that night. A small projectile flew out of the driver’s seat and sailed past Hati’s nose, and he knew he’d spoken too soon. The projectile dangled below the star path but was connected to something; Hati walked around the edge of the wain.

“You’re fishing?”

“For people.”

“Are you sure this is – ?”

Mani yanked on the rod and pulled the projectile into the wain. Attached to it was a small slip of paper. He read it and tossed the projectile back among the stars while thinking, “It’s going to take a little while to get this prayer into motion, but it’s not a no”.

Possible names include: Worm, Sap, Chaste, Fish, Crust, Crow, and Lenten Moon. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Fish”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction that I wrote last March but was asked to schedule for this year (2017).

. . .

Mani dropped a few breadcrumbs into the pond water and waited for a moment or two. A flash of red and orange led the way in crowding around the crumbs, and he carefully dropped in pellets as well. He let his fingers trail in the water, and as the fish brushed his fingertips, sections of white appeared on their scales. While Mani spent most of his time steering the moon at night in the company of the stars, he didn’t mind starting out while there was still daylight hours on some days. Sometimes, it could be as relaxing as sitting at the edge of a pond and streaking the koi.

Yes, another dream from the third of 2016 without laptop / wifi. This one is relatively less weird. Dated 10.31.16: Dream relating to prison.

A male teen was supposedly trick-or-treating as a “serial killer” with a face mask and a real knife. He didn’t say, “Trick or treat”, when I opened the door and instead raise the knife like he was going to stab me. I panicked, twisted his wrist so he’d drop the knife, and pushed / kicked him so he’d back up enough that I could close (and lock) the door. It wasn’t as clear cut cycle / repeat as some dreams, so sometimes details would just kinda change as I tried to explain what happened to other people in dream (push / kick, f’ex). Either way he fell backwards off the porch and hit his head on our concrete walkway (and sometimes had a sprained wrist).

His mother was watching from a bit of a distance and pressed charges; we live one house away from the sheriff’s department, so in dream they appeared to arrest and book me. I tried to plead to an assault charge, but because the guy died in the hospital several days later from brain swelling, his mother wanted to go for a murder charge (“I used undue force” and over-defended myself).

With repeats, the rulings and sentences changed; sometimes I plead to assault and sometimes I was found guilty of a lesser murder charge. At some point, I think someone was explaining that I could face 5 years of jail time, but I’m not 100% sure what the ultimate sentencing decision was (I did wind up in jail for murder, though). While in prison, I wrote to someone through a penpal service and got a chain tattoo around my neck with “Gleipnir” involved in the design somehow. //End//

While this does seem a bit alarming on the surface, at the time I wasn’t overly concerned about any foreshadowing. I wind up with the weird metaphor shit more so than anything relating to prophetic dreams. Around this time was also when I was mulling over the pros and cons of taking up letter writing at some point, so the main message was support from Fenrir (particularly if I go for a inmate penpal service).

This was also Fenrir’s way of dropping the idea of a devotional tattoo for Him, but I actually can’t get the exact tattoo from the dream. The name “Gleipnir” itself was incorporated into the design of the interlocked chain (no breaks or missing links; “eternally connected links”), which are both no-nos. Either one of these, but especially combining both, would lead to an energetic equivalent of Gleipnir. As a cub of Fenrir, I can’t handle that, and I would just wind up hurting the wolf in me in some way. The overall request has been noted, though, and we’ll work out details for something in the future.

Part of not having my laptop / wifi working for the last third of 2016 is that I still have bits and pieces of communication spread out among 3 notebooks awaiting transcription into my Google doc for 2016 communication. Some of a piece dated 10.19.16 (discusses The Strain, specifically the show) follows.

Show context: It’s basically a vampire story with a medical outbreak frame / start (stingers are involved in ingesting blood and reside within the throat). Professor Setrakian is analyzing a book called the Lumen, which has details compiled through history about the strigoi (vampires) and their Master (head vampire / creator) that will hopefully help this group destroy them. Eph is an arrogant asshole at times, and he’s a doctor. Quinlan is a strigoi-human hybrid who is currently assisting the humans. The Freedom centers are sketchy af “”medical centers”” that you should not go to.

I’ve been having a recurring dream since I got to season 3 of catching up on The Strain, in which I’m somehow in the hotel where Setrakian is looking at the Lumen and sort of helping. Photographing the pages at different points in the day (since a plot point included general daylight revealing ink) and having good color copies of the pages to look at if the professor wants to keep the book locked away (instead of the blurry b+w copies in the show, which pain me). Some behind the scenes help like cooking and reminding people to eat, which extended to carefully measured blood donations for Quinlan.

A lot of the dreams were explaining different things about me as I had to explain certain behaviors – Wolf mode could kick in very noticeably to protect me, f’ex. I had to explain being nonbinary and how important using correct pronouns is, and I had to talk about my People and ancestor veneration (I apparently had a traveling shrine set up and had to convince them to leave it alone, and it came up in talking about tattoos at some point). I had warned them that the strigoi outbreak had kept me from getting my antidepressants refilled, so I’d unintentionally quit cold turkey, and Quinlan confirmed it (tasting a decreasing amount then none of the meds in my blood).

Quinlan had a distanced, separated sort of compassion that reminds me of Hela, in a way, and there was something about his ‘monstrosity’ that I kept referring to him as cousin (in not English). I wasn’t always fully present at night from slipping into a higher level of Wolf mode while dreaming / sleeping, so I did and said things that were a bit unconventional (played with Hati, spoke in German to Setrakian, spoke in Russian to Quinlan). It freaked them out because it wasn’t knowledge I had when awake, and they kinda wanted to find a separate safe place for me but didn’t want to bring it up directly with me. I ended up bringing it up in one ‘actually asleep’ state because my Wolf was worried about suicidal ideation.

I wasn’t a warrior, and I was limited in how I could help with their cause, so it was only a matter of time before I couldn’t keep fighting the internal voice about how useless I was. Some of what a friend has talked about from the books has colored this because I know show!Quinlan wouldn’t give a fuck. In the dream, Quinlan was more like ‘you’re not useless; you’re just not suited for this work so you’re struggling’. We made some sort of agreement that I would only kill myself if I were infected (Setrakian wanted to have someone else “release” me), and I would be allowed to live in another safe location with access to the medication I needed when they found one (my visit to the Freedom center revealed the sketchiness of them in the dream).

In the meantime I was counted as one of the blood donors for the ‘our side’ strigoi, which helped with the uselessness. Quinlan tolerated me “because there’s always been people like you, even if it’s different, strange, or freakish to others”. He found it slightly amusing that I was usually calmer around him when he didn’t hide the noise from having the stinger in his throat, particularly since it helped with falling asleep.

Might have been some cuddling involved? My notes don’t explicitly include it, but there’s suddenly a tangent on feeling uncomfortable with the fandom sexualizing this character. I’m not entirely sure, but I view Quinlan like family and I view cuddling as platonic, so I’m not surprised at that tangent. Thinking of Quinlan like a cousin is like how Kylo Ren felt like an older brother (makes total sense to me, but possibly confuses others). I don’t have confirmation (Someone claiming it), but I’m rather confident that some of my People were using a pop culture frame for giving me some encouragement and possible coping mechanisms.

I had intended to wait until I actually had the deck in my hands to post about it here, but since I got an update about it today (and today is my birthday), I thought I’d go ahead and give a heads up.

I backed the Flowers of the Night oracle at the request of Several of my People, though Nott and Fenrir were the ones Who publicly claimed doing so. The following is a sample of the companion book’s description for a card (Angel’s Trumpet) in the Kickstarter’s description.

The email today was that the decks are going to start getting mailed out over the next two weeks, though I’m not holding my breathe on lightning fast delivery (it’s shipping from Australia).

Possible names include: Cold, Long Nights, Oak, Christmas,and Moon Before Yule. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Yule”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction.

. . .

Mani flicked the reins gently, and the horses slowed down along the star path. He opened his thermos and settled into the reindeer blankets, listening to snippets of celebrations. Hati stretched near his feet and glanced down at the worlds below.

“They really like throwing parties in the winter, don’t they?”

Mani hummed with the faint tune of a carol before replying, “It’s how they keep their lights kindled.”

A passing Snowflake waved at the pair, and Mani waved back. He flicked the reins again, and the horses resumed their normal pace.

Possible names include: Beaver, Snow, Frost, and Frosty Moon. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Frost”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction.

. . .

Mani watched the human through the window. It wasn’t a movie cliche with warm lighting, many family members, and food on the table, but they were okay. His fingers glided over the glass, leaving swirls of frost. The paperwork had gone through, and all the energy cords connecting them had been cut, but that only dulled things down to an ache and a whisper of loss. He knew they would move on faster because human systems were built for that (lifespans barely edged beyond a century), but he didn’t know when this feeling would recede into memory.

Possible names include: Travel, Dying, Blood, and Hunter’s Moon. Mani indicated that He would like me to use “Dying”, though I make no guarantee He’d want someone else to do the same. The following is a piece of sacred fiction.

. . .

The sun sets on pale flesh, and he cites the light of truth for the transformation in the moonlight – wounds with hanging skin, dried blood, the heat of inflammation and infection, the smell of rot. You may think you are fine, but trust what is revealed at night – you are dying on the inside.

No matter how close to the edge you get, you can’t deny that there’s a spark inside. A devotional hazard of so many Light affiliated People leaving hope, love, and stars in Their wake. Embrace that little spark instead of testing it.